§ Nice art: Arthur Adams posted a piece of Avengers art on his Facebook page and people went nuts! In case you missed it, Art Adams is a very important artist in comics history. Although he was much influenced by Mike Golden, it’s Adams highly detailed, fine-lined art that formed the inspiration for most of the original Image artists, including Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. They, in turn, produced hordes of imitators, and Lee’s smoothly proportioned, heroically posed art remains the DC house style to this day. So, in a way Art Adams is the father of modern superhero comics, which some people might think a punishable offense, but I’ll let the rest debate that in the comments.

Now: a confession, when I saw this piece floating by on my FB feed I thought “Wow, that Art Adams sure KNEW how to draw!” because for some reason I had it in my head that because he’s been around for 30 years he must be over the hill by now. But no, it’s from this very year. The kid has still got it.

In case you’re wondering, here’s the colored version by Chris Sotomayor.

§ Okay, now this is nuts! Cartoonists are so famous now that a whole news story was written about one moving to town! In this case it’s Noah van Sciverwho is moving to Columbus, OH, and the piece interviews locals about what his arrival will mean and how may donuts they need to buy and everything. I made that last part up.

“I have no apartment yet [in Columbus], so my main priority is to find a good place and settle in, and then establish myself in the city,” Van Sciver said recently over the phone from the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont, where he’s been working as a Fellow for the past year. “But I’m already setting a lot of my stories [in Columbus], like, ‘This is it. This is my town. I’m going to stick around.’”

Davodeau uses a unique storytelling technique for Lulu Anew in that the story is being narrated around an outdoor table by a group of Lulu’s friends. The viewpoint character is constantly changing from Lulu’s friends, her husband’s friends, and her daughter. The group of friends acts something like a Greek chorus for the story. They act as the ideal spectator/reader, mirroring the emotional reactions of the reader as the story progresses. With ancient Greek plays, however, the action occurs in front of the reader and the Chorus reacts or adds context to the story. In Lulu Anew, the Chorus is the story, and in that way, Lulu Anew is an outsider’s recounting of the action of a woman as she attempts to find freedom from an unhappy marriage. We get other people’s retellings of Lulu’s feelings and thoughts, but she is impossibly far away from us. Despite Lulu Anew being a story about Lulu, it’s not her story.

Even if that work was lucky enough to be seen by a large audience, who is to say whether or not an exact duplicate preceded it? Julia Gfrörer’s Dark Age centers on decay, the passage of time, and artistic expression through this lens. Natural beauty, art, and life are portrayed as vulnerable to obsolescence, though their preservation is important to those involved.

§ Jason Sacks has been analyzing old issue of Steve Gerber’s Son of Satan which is a good excuse to look at groovy old comics art. However, Saks does not bother to mentioned anywhere in this piece that the art is by Sal Buscema, with inks by Joe Giella, colors by Petra Goldberg and lettering by Karen Mantlo. Shame shame shame, Jason Sacks.

Heidi MacDonald is the founder and editor in chief of The Beat. In the past, she worked for Disney, DC Comics, Fox and Publishers Weekly. She can be heard regularly on the More To Come Podcast. She likes coffee, cats and noble struggle.

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Comments

Huh. I can see any number of influences in Arthur Adams’ style, but I never imagined Michael Golden to be one of them–much less a primary one. Nothing at all against Golden; I just don’t see many similarities.

Andrew, there is a lot of Golden in Adams’ work! I think the eyes are the most obvious influence, those slightly oversized, expressive eyes. The other spot would be the cartooniness. Both artists have a roundness to their shapes.

The thing that sets Adams apart, to me, is his textural detailing, and early on, heavy hatching.

That said, I’m much more familiar with Adams than Golden, I mostly only know Golden from a five year period in the 80s when he was prolific at Marvel. His style may have shifted since then.